Movin' On Up

Children learn at an early age to express their creativity in unique ways--sometimes resulting in graffiti. Take a look at the drawing below which I discovered on the playground at the school I work at. This child is clearly learning to graffiti for the first time, since the drawing is done in sidewalk chalk. Tsk. Tsk. I admire the child for wanting to share his love of lollipops, but that face is kind of a creepy one, which made me not enjoy the Lollipop Licker wording as much.


Now, we fast forward through this child's life a few years and he's progressed. No longer is he drawing on playgrounds, but rather, he is now expressing his need to beautify the city by writing on street signs. I took the featured picture below in Stratford-upon-Avon, England last year (I must admit that this picture is my favorite from all the pictures I took in the United Kingdom).

This child who has gone from drawing lollipops to writing Hammer Time has moved up in more ways than one:

1: The child can now reach higher things than the playground stairs. He can now reach tall street signs to express his thoughts.
2. The child no longer is drawing a gremlin-looking thing who loves to lick lollipops.
3. The child actually used song lyrics to promote his graffiti, which I find hilarious...since it's an American song (on an English stop sign) from the early '90s.
4. The child made me laugh with his whole STOP Hammer Time stunt, because it was so unexpected for me to find next to Shakespeare's burial site in 2009.
5. The child has left behind chalk and gone for permanency, thus leaving behind his mark for all to enjoy...unless, of course, the street sign gets taken down.
6. The child has moved all the way from Utah to a city in England that is best known as Shakespeare's birthplace and burial site.

Despite this child's creativity, he does have one downfall. No, it's not the fact that he is drawing on public property. No, it is not the fact that it's irreverent to write on a stop sign that is right next to the Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare was buried. No, it's not the fact that Hammer Time is not written in a straight line but starts moving in the upper right position. The downfall of this child is that I never see any good graffiti around here, in Utah...oh wait, four years ago I saw a stop sign that said STOP (obviously) and then underneath, it said Bush. Somebody actually wrote STOP Bush...in Utah!

But, no one can beat the STOP Hammer Time sign because:

I've toured around the world, from London to the Bay.

It's "Hammer, go Hammer, MC Hammer, yo, Hammer"

and the rest can go and play.

U Can't Touch This

***I don't support graffiti, but if you're going to do it anyways, then you might as well make it entertaining for those who have to see it everyday.